


Que Sera Sera

by dorothy_notgale and Tromperie (dorothy_notgale)



Series: The Boys From the Castle [2]
Category: Lupin III, The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Brainwashing, Codependency, Genderfluid Character, Master/Slave, Other, Promiscuity, Sex Work, Unhealthy fixation, age gap, the 60s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 02:59:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8384653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothy_notgale/pseuds/dorothy_notgale%20and%20Tromperie
Summary: When I was just a little girl, I asked my Mother, "What will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?" Here's what she said to me...The streets of Paris are no place for wild children abandoned by their masters--or the perfect place. Some things change little, over 500 years.The vampire Armand discovers something kindred in the strange mortal being known as Oscar. Their wounds so nearly match.





	

ARMAND

Paris was not home, but it was a place to which Armand could return after his years away. It was a place he could go when the city he'd taken unwittingly from two unaware of the larger fight grew hot and strangling.

Louis should be New Orleans' master, if he still lived, but he'd abandoned it and all else when Armand finally tore himself away. And Lestat--Lestat was dead, and might remain so for all Armand cared.

It had been thirty years since he'd spent longer with another vampire than was required to dispatch trespassers from anywhere he cared to stay.

Paris was not home, but he passed by the closed cemetery and the building erected over the ruins of the Theatre nonetheless, seeking prey, one night in 1961 when the moon was full like a worn silver coin.

(The tower, he did not visit.)

It was simple, these days, to open his mind to the despairing and wait for them to come to him. Their blood was as sweet as their gratitude as they lay dying in his arms, their love for him crystallized while they left this world. He waited. And in waiting, a possibility passed him by. 

A mortal of pitiable means was rushing toward nowhere, each footstep punctuated by a hard click of heels against uneven and antiquated streets. The child--all mortals were to him, but this one seemed it even by the standards of the living--was neither man nor woman: the torn remains of a skirt said one thing, their sex another; and the most crucial element, their mind, was sticky with the meddling of foreign hands. That, more than anything, caught his attention. He slipped from the ramparts of buildings now labeled “historic," and began to follow in his prey's shadow. 

Every few feet he would touch their mind, and each time the crowding of thoughts had reformed into a different jagged pattern: now a proud young man, now a lost little girl, now a raging demon, a pathetic and submissive slave, a yearning heart. And beneath it all, a pulsing lust that frightened and beguiled them. Their thin shoulders shook under the weight of it all, hidden beneath a coat far too large for their frame, worn and smelling of tobacco. 

The child came to a bridge over the stinking waters of the Seine, and Armand's curiosity got the better of him. He stepped from the shadows as they contemplated the water. "What do you plan to do?"

"Who's there?" Their eyes rolled wildly before settling on Armand, and then the child’s posture went wary. "What do you want?" they demanded through bared teeth.

Angry dark eyes, wild hair, the speech of a Frenchman--victims were victims, many thousand stacked up, but Armand had shown more than one like this the mercy of death, over the years.

He glided forward, urging calm with his mind. The stink of fucking clung to the pretty little creature whose hands braced upon the bridge railing.

"Nothing you are unwilling to give," he replied, taking in the art and artifice that had been applied to the smudged face turned blue-gold by moon and streetlamps. Armand had so often painted  faces for the stage, his time in his master's studio serving him strangely centuries later. "You  may certainly jump, if that is your wish, but it would be such a waste."

A snarl, nearly inhuman, came from the throat. "Is that a threat? Jump, or you'll--"

Riotous images floated up, inventive and painful and nothing like accurate. Filthy.

Filthy from the self-hate that coated them.

"I don't intend to do anything. I'm only observing." They were of comparable height, disregarding the high heeled shoes. The child's dark hair curled and fell like his. 

"Why bother showing yourself?" A flash of calculating intelligence broke the surface, eyes narrowed in probing observation. Yes, this one was intriguing. 

"To see what would happen." He stepped closer, and his victim lashed out, aiming a blow to his stomach that would've felled a grown man. To dead flesh, hardening over the centuries, it was nothing. Armand caught them, watching as they struggled to their body's limits and beyond, until he could smell the tearing of muscle beneath the surface.

"Careful, pretty," he said with a smile, feeling a ferocious will to live peaking and receding like waves. There were memories teasing, strangely prescient images and sensations as though they had already drowned. "You're hurting yourself."

"I'm used to pain," they said in a strange voice, floating up and down the register and sounding like a choir of young people.

Their coat flapped open, revealing a blouse half-fastened over a flat chest emblazoned with delicate blue curlicues.

Art; Armand pinned them in place almost without thinking, just to run his fingers over the slightly raised pattern inked below skin. It was good, repetitious, something he could follow with a fingertip through knots and twists, and he pushed the collar of the shirt to one side in his desire to see more.

His prize went still beneath his touch, their breath almost gone. "Don't touch me," they said, even as Armand smelled their arousal redoubling, hot and musky under the sweat and dirt and drying seed. 

He backed them to the edge of the railing, still focused on his pursuit as he let them dangle, one foot on the ground and torso dangling over the water, at the mercy of Armand's hold. If he released them now, their skull would shatter on impact, their neck snapping like so much dry kindling. The pattern persisted over the fragile knob of their shoulder, concealing an old gunshot wound lovingly patched. It traced down over that narrow chest, and Armand's fingers followed, brushing one hard-pebbled nipple and letting himself enjoy the disproportionate effect it caused. 

This one was a match for the Catholics in their sackclothes, submerged in cold denial until their body craved nothing so much as release, until the snapping of their resolve catapulted them into decadence. 

Push, and pull. Cause and effect. 

"Don't..." They arched into his touch. 

He let go, suspending them by only the slightest pressure. "Do you wish to die?" He could give that, in so many ways.

After a long, long silence, they replied in a voice even younger than their face.

"No?" Their breath was thready, and their legs hooked awkwardly through one of Armand's. The strappy little shoes poked his flesh displeasingly. "I--I died already. I wanted to come back again, but he wouldn't--he didn't want--" One of their hands left the railing to grip Armand's forearm for apparently dear life. "I want to live."

The things leaking from their fractured mind were disjointed, but the gist was there. A man, a patron, who took you in and adored you and held you through the nights when the emptiness and fullness of the past threatened. An older man, perfect and whole, who taught you all you know besides all you knew already.

The stuff leaking  _ elsewhere _ was--intriguing. Armand's pets had often felt mortal lust (and he'd enjoyed showing Louis that with Denis, before he learned Louis had vanishingly small interest in any such things). But usually it came after the bite, after his cosseting and care. This lovely human wanted no one and everyone, and after seemingly already serving their purpose once this night. 

"How unfortunate for you." The theater stayed with him in little ways, and it came to him now, as his smile revealed just a hint of his fangs. 

He enjoyed seeing those dark eyes go wide and glassy, their thoughts caught between self-preserving flight and deadly entrancement.  _ Be still _ was the order he gave, and his mortal crumpled like a broken doll. But still those eyes followed, fighting through the murky compulsion of Armand's mind to watch him. 

He pressed his lips to their long, thin neck, breaking the skin with the tenderness he showed all the unfortunates who wandered into his arms. 

They cried out, all the energy they had left contained in one low moan that trembled through their frame. Armand could feel their hips shudder and snap in search of relief, though he had none to give. Other matters concerned him. 

This mind was like his own, and yet not. Everywhere there were static images, disconnected and shoved atop one another, until they broke and rearranged into new, impossible kaleidoscopes. He fed back the image of that mentor, and  a cry of both despair and terror rose to meet him. This mind was another was another was another, and before he could properly begin to unravel the pile of shards he could feel the heartbeat in his grasp threatening to dim. Hanging once more on a precipice he controlled.

The beauty had spoken, though, and was more than half sure. Cruelty was a fine enough game, but better when prolonged, and it had been such a long time since he'd kept a plaything. And it wasn't as though there would be mortal trouble; not one person on the earth would worry where this one's bones were buried, in the end.

So Armand ceased his drink, lapped a touch at the wound (there were memories there of a necklace of sucked-in bruises at a young age, just as there were memories of never being kissed at all until a lovely teacher relented), and oh-so-gently tipped this little darling towards himself rather than out into the black.

"You'll be mine now," he said into an ear and a mind dazed with all that had happened for twenty years and twenty minutes. "You understand? I'll care for you, and I'll choose when you die for me."

Their long legs buckled, and they fell to their knees before Armand, arms about his waist and face buried in his thigh.

He stroked their dark curls, feeling the grease and tangles marring what might be a lovely picture. This mind was too full to overpower, at least if he wanted it intact for study. He played a defter hand instead, beginning with the thought that they must stand, must tell him what they were called - the memories had so many names, ringing together like a hundred bells.

The waif shook their head, though they rose without question. Inexplicable relief rolled off of them in waves. 

"What were you called?" he asked aloud, to give it precedence. Names were fickle, untrustworthy things, and he didn't give them. Not when they meant so little, and the whole of one's being as well. 

"Is--Oscar,"  they whispered. They looked at him through long lashes, their eyes ringed with dark circles. 

"Good." He started down the street, eventually taking Oscar's arm when their dazed footsteps left them too far behind. 

The rest of the night was spent in procuring essentials. Armand had retired to cemeteries and burned-out houses as he traveled, some part of him still imitating Louis' dead spirit, but this one was too fragile for that. Already they looked on the verge of collapse, and so it fell to him to arrange for a room of sufficient means, heated by a small "old-fashioned" stove and lit with soft lamps. He had a steamer trunk carried in to serve as his bed for the night, and pressed enough money into the bellhop's hands that they didn't question the peculiar clanking within it. 

Oscar followed behind without a word, though they had again taken on that look of careful observation. Armand stripped and washed him, ignoring their arousal and hopeful hesitance. When they were lulled, wrapped in a robe with the dirty coat clutched to their chest (the only item they had refused to give up), Armand went to the chest. 

He lifted a heavy chain from the trunk, not meeting Oscar's curious gaze (though he made sure to keep their body still with thoughts of fog, of sleep, of impossible weight) even as he fastened one end of a manacle to their ankle and the other to a heavy desk. Oscar allowed it tamely, thoughts of deserved prison and something like a childhood home both mixing at the touch of cold iron on their flesh.

They were a picture, white skin, pink mouth, and all else black wrought iron: hair and eyes and chains.

In the hour before dawn, Armand pressed them down to the thin mattress of the bed and tugged the robe down to their elbows. They breathed shallowly, and fear of--something, something Armand had felt long centuries ago before it was crowded out of him--choked the atmosphere, but there was no refusal and the markings on chest and shoulder were mesmerizing, too perfect to be believed. Circuitous paths, and if he kissed his new charge on the mouth or the nipples there was no resistance.

"Oscar," he said again and again, "Oscar, my boy, my child, my beauty." It mattered little what word, so long as he kept saying things against the flesh. So long as he kept his love warm.

At dawn, he issued commands and folded himself into the trunk, far enough from the bed and desk that the chain wouldn't reach.

"I will return; wait; don't leave or disturb."

They were  _ lovely _ as he left them there, shattered and held together by mere spiderwebs. They should keep well enough until nightfall.

 

*

 

He woke to dry, rasping breaths. After so many nights alone, it seemed impossibly loud -- scraping, rust-colored gasps that raked across his ears until he lifted the lid of the trunk to see and remember his charge. Oscar was laying out on the small bed, curled on their side. Were it not for the immediate smell of blood and the raw, red ring around their ankle, he might have thought they hadn't moved at all. 

This child seemed wholly different from the one before. They glared at him, their body concealing a shard from the broken bathroom mirror that they thought he couldn't see. 

How interesting. 

He'd instructed unquestioning obedience in the past; his life and death offered a wealth of experiences to draw upon in molding the soul. But he'd never seen one who wished so completely for freedom and surrender simultaneously. 

"I can smell your blood." he said. He came close as if nothing were the matter. He was still and calm as Oscar aimed the shard at his jugular, moving just enough so that it struck him in the shoulder instead. Arteries were tedious to heal. 

He held tight to his bloodlust, drinking instead the brief triumph on that traitorous face, quickly poisoned by horror. 

"Monster." They tried to move out of range, and Armand caught the back of their neck and held them he had the night before. This time they didn't struggle, only waited. 

The wound was already beginning to heal, but the blood around it remained, staining his shirt. A thought occurred to him--an image of  the sweetest moment of his mortal life. "Clean it." He shoved Oscar's face into the congealing mess, pressing them down until their only choice was to obey or be smothered. Once more he felt that shift, the resistance cracking and becoming obedience, then eagerness. Oscar's tongue was hot and dry against his skin, and he could feel the throb of the swoon taking hold as they leaned against him, lapping at the closing wound. When it was gone they fell to all fours, leaving wet trails on his bare feet as they searched for spare droplets of that fallen high.

A slave, then; though he sensed they would object to that term.

They would object to many things,  _ especially _ truths and desires. And he would push, but not too hard this night. For their too-thin body shook even in this attitude of supplication, malnourished and short of blood, and he must feed them on more than his own essence if they were to live longer than a few weeks.

(He'd tested that, once; the thing so produced had been wraithlike and devoted, and then one night he woke to a dormant bundle of sticks curled beside his coffin, the blood he'd left her puddling the tiled floor.)

They made a high whining sound when he bent, took hold of their shoulders, and eased them to sit on the edge of the bed. They tried in vain to conceal the swelling organ beneath their thin robe with crossed legs and folded hands. Though Armand could see it and smell it and  _ sense _ it he made no sign, only walking to the bags of clothing he'd brought in his trunk and removing two items.

"We're going out," he said, and extended both arms towards Oscar. "You will be seen. Choose."

Oscar's bloody lips parted in shock or anger, and their hand shot out before freezing, hovering between. It wavered gently back and forth like a branch in the breeze for long moments before finally settling on the tattered tweed suit.

"You're certain?" Armand asked, grip still firm on the cloth.

"I--" Wary face, waiting to be punished for following instructions. "The dress would show my ankle. Sir. It would prompt questions."

And wasn't that a lovely thought. Still, too soon for that; Armand released the suit, and took the polka-dotted chiffon for himself.

He felt their eyes on him as he dressed, heard them swallow desire at the sight of his cold, dead body and its flaccid disinterest. The dress was too large for either of them, though it suited him better than the suit--when Oscar finally obeyed they seemed to drown in the fabric, a child in their father's clothes. They stood for approval, posture perfect, echoes of academy training filling the room. 

"Good," he said. Praise would be necessary, it seemed. Their face flowered into an expression of joy they lacked even the awareness to hide. "You'll accompany me to dinner." 

As his charge walked beside him, out the door and down the street, he thought of his yearning for a guide, and the terrible stasis that haunted him even now. But no--his pet seemed as bewildered by the lights and sounds around them as he was, senses reduced to fragile powder by the cacophony in their head. They wouldn't survive teaching him.

They passed a group of men who called out to him, whistling and gesturing. Oscar snarled, their hand suddenly tight on his arm as they pulled him near, though they had no mass to shelter him. 

Despite the confusion of the world's refusal to be still, some things never changed, no matter the century, and this was one. There were always those who enjoyed their power without realizing that those they mocked could snuff them out like lights, given the opportunity.

But now was not the time, and as enjoyable as it sometimes was to kill for pride and spite, Armand preferred his prey yielding and grateful. Romantic, perhaps. Louis had not approved, but oh well.

He'd been Gentleman Death once, so long ago.

Now he curled himself ostentatiously beneath his "boy's" arm, letting all the world see him as the possessed rather than the possessor. Those lean, strong muscles shook with exhaustion by the time he got them to a small restaurant, and Oscar froze once there.

"You have money," Armand whispered, sensing the reason for the hesitation. "Though we could steal, if you would prefer."

Contempt warred with curiosity, and finally Armand reached into the inner breast pocket of the suit and extracted the wallet Armand had concealed there.

Something like remorse appeared on Oscar's face and mind at the sight of it; actual guilt, not just shame. Different, because so far he'd seemed to have no morals whatsoever not tied to pride or self-preservation.

That look of uncertainty stayed on Oscar's face all through dinner as great extravagances of food arrived, all on their side of the table. 

"I'm not hungry," Armand smiled to the waiter, seeming a pretty young woman eager to impress her date. 

Oscar's hunger overcame them in the end, the plates left empty by the time the bill arrived. Armand watched them pay with crisp bills, curious, and folded a piece of cutlery into his skirt while they were turned away. 

Oscar seemed more certain out on the street, stronger even as they continued to respond to the gentle steering of Armand's touch. He brought them again to the bridge, soaking in the shudder that passed through them. He leaned against the railing, taking the knife from within his dress and enjoying the way it caught the streetlight. It was worthless, and yet Oscar seemed transfixed by it. 

"You stole that," they said, half between accusation and confusion. 

"Yes." The polished sheen flashed as he held it up. "Do you want it?" 

Oscar's hand shook as they reached out, closing around the knife and then reeling back to throw it in the river. 

Armand watched it fall. "What a waste." 

"I should turn you in." They were saying, that aimless danger animating their limbs once more. "Filthy thief." They seemed themself, one Armand hadn't seen before.

"You think I'm just a thief?" He smiled, baring the tips of fangs. "How can you condemn something so meaningless, when you don't care that I'm a killer?"

Their hands were on Armand's shoulders, trying to shake him, and he smiled through it, allowed them to press him to the railing.

So close; so pretty and angry. Mortal lusts were beyond him, but there would never be an end to appreciating such closeness.

"You're criminal," Oscar hissed, touching his hair, the dress he'd taken from a victim, the whole of him a contrast in the night.

" _ We're _ criminal, my friend. You ate the food, didn't you? You wore the clothes?"

"I hate--"

Somewhere nearby came the sound of footsteps, heavy and solid. Oscar froze and craned their neck.

A man, verging on middle age, hat low over his brow, came around the corner, and Armand swung a leg up to Oscar's hip to better enjoy the pulse of confused, horrified lust that rose up like flames. They looked like a couple, a boy and a girl together in the night, until Oscar jumped away as though scalded.

Displeasing.

The man just stumbled drunkenly past as though he hadn't even seen them, and in the slow mortal time before Oscar could again collect themself Armand was behind them on tiptoe in heeled sandals, throat in his hand ready to be bitten or torn out or  _ stroked _ .

"Watch," he whispered, breath cool on their ear. "If you run, I'll catch you." 

He had hungers too. And while the man wasn't his preference, wasn't even one of Lestat's much decried evildoers, he would do. 

Armand caught him in a flash. It would have been simple to soothe the man's struggles, his angry shouts, to lead him blissful and unaware into death. But this was a lesson. He bit down, feeling the thrashing body weaken until it was no more than a corpse, a weight of meat and bones that he dragged like a child's doll to the railing, making the customary marks to hide the bite and strip away the valuables before throwing it over the side. He'd been a man of meager means, it seemed, and Armand remembered to look to his charge only after rifling through the battered wallet. 

Oscar's pupils were pinpricks in their head, the white of their sclera vivid in the dark. Yet they stood exactly where Armand had left them, and it was only when his eyes fell on them once more that they fled. 

He gave them a headstart, waiting a few blocks before snatching his toy and pinning them to an alley wall. He could hear the thundering of their heart, and it was only the sated sensation from that drunken blood that kept him from draining them dry. 

"You disobeyed me." 

Oscar shook, the smallest moan escaping their lips, and Armand understood that they had waited for him to see them, had disobeyed only when they knew they would be caught.

"Do you often disobey your keepers, my child?" His Oscar--for surely Oscar was no one else's in this world--shivered when his words brushed their (his? in the suit, were they a he?) skin, rigid and breakable and  _ soft _ all at once. And strong, bearing all that inside a single eggshell skull. "Are you one to test?"

Oscar was remembering being a little girl, too worn down by pain to think of disobeying, or of moving, ever again. And remembering, also, being a boy on a street, a fight and a man demanding they live.

And being a woman, and being rejected for both refusing and trying to obey.

"What do you want, my pet?" It was cruel of Armand to do this, press himself against that lean human figure and provoke every kind of fear, disgust, and lust, but Armand  _ was _ cruel. It didn't mean that he couldn't be kind as well. "You deserve a reward, for your beauty. Your perfection. But you are so very disobedient. What must I do?"

"I--I want--to live." Repeating last night's words rote, perhaps, but there was such potential to them nonetheless.

Armand could teach this wing-clipped creature how to live.

He could mandate it, as his master had done for himself so long ago.

He took them back to the room that was not their home, and spent the remaining hours in planning, Oscar's head quiet and pillowed on his thigh. Underneath the compulsion their thoughts were unfocused and content, never fighting against the stream of comforts Armand offered. 

He had gone on like this for years with many of his pets, quieting their minds until they were only a vessel to fill up with his own thoughts, their eyes dull and grateful without comprehension. There was comfort in that. 

But it wasn't living. 

And so, lacking a compass for himself, Armand set out to discover what life his charge might wish.

In the nights that followed, he arranged for his few things to be taken to an extravagant hotel (not the Hotel Saint-Gabriel; even he had ghosts to avoid), shepherding a beguiled Oscar into boutiques to have suits made to fit their frail body, dresses made for a sister conjured out of air. He dressed his living doll, combed their hair until it shone and curled about their shoulders. They walked along the Champs de Lyse, the shops closed for the night; and by the waterfront, constantly brushing along the edges of society but never touching it. 

He took to clouding Oscar's mind for the first part of the evening, dressing them in silk stockings or button-down shirts and leading them to some unknown place, a darkened smoking lounge or a crowded bar, and then letting them up to see what they made of it. 

It always began in the same way. Even as they began to recognize the pattern, their eyes would go wide. They would stiffen, as if listening for predators, and glance around their surroundings, seeking to put their back to a wall. They would glare at him and eat what was brought, avoiding conversation with cold stares to outside parties. And yet they locked up at his touch on their knee, blushed at the sight of couples rutting in the dark. 

One night, Armand signaled the bartender and had a drink brought for his young ladyfriend--tonight she, a girl of no past or future--a smooth red cocktail to match his own amusement. The liquor was dampened by sugar, and Oscar drank without seeming to notice. They finished one, then two more, and though it was trifling next to the hard, clear liquids lining the shelf, their face was red. 

"I'm," They started to stand from their stool, falling against Armand when their foot caught on a rung. They buried their face in his hair.

"You're drunk, my love," he said softly, gently, stroking his hand down the back of a dress last worn by a near-suicide. Near, because he'd helped her along. Oscar had watched, blunt mortal teeth cutting into their pale pink lip, and Armand had enjoyed that small taste, too.

"No," she panted, cleaving to him even in her denial. "I don't drink. Alcohol dampens the mind..." Funny, seeing one persona peek through when the situation didn't match it. Armand kissed the upright police trainee full on the mouth and fondled him back into submission. "I don't feel well," she said after, when he was already half-supporting her and it seemed half the bar was watching out of the corners of their eyes.

Her dress was cut high, not low; all the leg in the world, in compensation for covering that beautifully embellished chest.

Every step she took showed more, drove her closer to him, and Oscar still seemed to think that meant something to Armand. Armand could leave her here to figure her troubles out herself. Coming back and finding the remains might be amusing, might be tasty, a fit end for this pet.

But he didn't want it to be over so soon.

He'd let the world have them, no doubt. It seemed almost inevitable, a fit station on the way to their death, but not yet.

So instead he placed a hand on her firm buttock and said, "I can make you feel better."

He didn't have to look down; despite the fullness of the skirt, he knew what lay beneath it. The jutting, lovely hardness that he'd so often ignored. They so often wanted, and yet never  _ had _ .

"It's not," those full lips started to say, and faltered as his touch strayed around and up, under the layer of tulle. " _ Here _ ?" Her voice was scandalized, indignant, while her cock jumped in his hand. 

Armand moved slowly, enjoying the agony that descended on Oscar's mind and the burn of blood flushing them red. in the half-shadows of the alley. He could still hear the music from inside, hear the crashing of the kitchen down the way. He peeled away their mind's meager defense, watching the pageantry puppeteered by his touch. 

"You're disgusting," Oscar said, and meant himself.  _ Fuck me _ , they thought, in terms fractal and disjointed--every image was blown to hysterical proportion, impossibly proportioned bodies contorted in bone-breaking positions. 

_ Don't touch me, _ she whimpered as he boxed her in, nuzzling at their neck.  _ Please, just leave me alone. _

He wiped his hand on a handkerchief and threw it into the dark, observing the glaze now in Oscar's eyes even without influence.

"Please. Won't you..." 

If he left her here, like this, someone would take her. But it wouldn't end the way he'd pictured.

"You must ask for what you need, my love," he said, pretending not to feel her hand snaking into his pocket, stealing spare change. They loved coins, not to spend but just to have, and he allowed their oddly furtive hoarding. It was no different in the end than his fondness for pressing them to whatever cheap mattress they had on a given week and tracing their tattoos until dawn threatened.

"I--I need--" she swallowed, moistened her lips and rolled them as though trying to appear even more lovely. Something shifted in their eyes, her mind, and they raised a leg to curl around his hip. "Please, use me."

"I do," he said so very sincerely, stroking fingers over the silvery scars he refused to open more than once or twice a week. "I use you exactly as I need."

Their soft mouth trembled, black eyes downcast. "You don't use me like..." they swallowed. "Like a beautiful woman."

They were so childish. Almost a crime  _ to _ use such a one, but they did beg for it. He raised his still unclean hand to their mouth, to parted lips, and it was a long moment before their tongue snaked out to taste the remnants left.

"My apologies," he said as they licked. "You are very beautiful. But you need more than I can give, I fear."

"I can show you." She bit gently on his fingertips as shey'd seen him do, as they might've seen on a movie screen. 

He'd forgotten more about sex than they would ever know, most of it hazy in his perfect memory; even alive, he'd viewed it through dim lenses of distaste, far outside a body given to the hands of so many others. Marius had made it different. Marius had shaped his entire world. 

But then, he'd only appreciated it by contrast. 

He thought on this as she pulled his fingers deeper into her mouth, daring her own curiosity until he flexed ever so slightly and she choked.

"Go home," he said. And though she fell into obedience her feet didn't know where to turn until he led her. 

 

***

 

Oscar was a disheveled mess the next night, eyes ringed and hair mussed. The room stank, and they wouldn't meet his eyes. Armand said nothing of it. 

"I'll be away for a few days." He began the work of his current persona, carefully molded to look older than his years by necessity. 

"Should I pack?" Already those proud eyes were filled with fear. 

"You aren't coming." 

The fear receded, hiding itself in haughtiness. "If you let your guard down, I'll escape." 

"Is that so?" They wandered Paris in a daze, even now. "In that case, I'll have to arrange company to keep you from being lonely."

"What?" Their midnight eyes were always wide, currently suspicious and canny. The best way, the thing that made Armand think they might be worth keeping a while. "You don't--I don't need company."

"You're a lonely child, my dear." He pressed his palm to their cheek, feeling the warmth, and they were too proud and stubborn to turn away. "I am your only connection, yes? The only one who wants you?"

Their face tightened, flesh drawn over bones (though less than before Armand took them in hand--they ate, and it showed). Through the patched tears and hasty seams of their mind, Armand saw the devotion they'd felt, so carefully fostered by their last owner.

The man must be dead, for such a  _ flinch _ from remembering the end. Armand couldn't regret having found the results, to make his nights a little less empty.

"Yes," they replied in low, clipped tones, their bearing regal and upright like a finely balanced blown-glass ornament. They would be so easy to shatter.

"Well then," he said, reaching around them to create a chaste embrace. "It falls to me to ensure that I keep you healthy. You're mine, and I don't wish your death. Or your loss."

It was easy enough to find them a “companion,” a mortal of weak will and simplistic morals. Not cruel, not brutal or perverse; just willing to take the money he offered for the “protection” of his charge and not ask questions.

Captives and slaves were the same now as they'd been in his time, after all, if more well-hidden.

"Don't forget to eat," he said before doing so himself the night before he left them, savoring their confusion and pleasure, the vague fear of aloneness. They moved against him, begging, as he drank their multiplicity of lives in a crimson torrent. "Take care of yourself," he said, petting their hair and ignoring their need.

He was gentle, beyond gentle--frustrating, he knew, and their face held bitterness when he closed the door on them.

 

*

 

The trip was not entirely a fiction- he took a plane to that city on the water, walking along the rusted gate of that overgrown house as he did every decade or so to ensure it was undisturbed. Even when thrown away, it wasn't so easy to forget. 

Louis had vanished, and Armand held just enough love in his dead heart not to search for him. He would survive, or he wouldn't, and someday Armand would know what had become of the husk he'd left behind. He carried the image of those passionate eyes still, though they were now as cold and remote as all his memories. 

He returned within a week, and went to observe his pet without their knowledge. The house he'd left them in was empty, neither owner nor guest in evidence. It held the ghosts of tenuous nerves, broken glass scattered across the floor. Some small irritation tickled him, the agitation of not knowing, and he unfolded his mind out over the city. 

Oscar was easy to find, their thoughts louder than all the rest. On the streets, in the bars, as they walked the same trails he'd led them on without even realizing it. They were dressed in suspenders and a patched shirt, stockings and garters hidden under practical pants. They'd tried cutting their hair, he saw, and done a bad job of it. It still framed their face, making their eyes look larger, their face softer in spite of that angular jaw. 

They were walking older trails than his this night, tensed on a pitch-dark street with scuffs on their face as they glared up at opponents twice their size. Their eyes were empty, more than a coin in their hands as they swayed, daring death or damnation or ruin and not seeming to know themself which they wanted. 

Armand watched the almost-dance, as the trainee displayed his combat skills while the child knew they were far outmatched against a group of assailants. As the woman dared them to make something of it, with a covert switchblade in hand. Their faceless assailants, their enemies, wore a thousand identities, all greater than the simple, drunken victims of a pickpocketing.

Armand watched as Oscar was brought to their knees, coughing blood onto still-cobbled streets. As their shirt tore, revealing those perfect patterns. It was interesting to see them reveal themself like this. But Armand only played games he had rigged beforehand.

As appealing as it all was, he didn't want his dear one to die in his arms just yet. And so he strolled up, as casually as though the street were empty, whistling something he'd heard in Venice when only barely dead. The animals heard him, saw him, and at first just ceased the active beating.  _ Let him pass by, respectable, _ their minds said.

Fools, thinking from his proper suit--even old-fashioned--that Armand had ever been “respectable.”

"What's going on here?" he asked, smile bright, looking down upon his Oscar's face.

They were--not confused. Surprised.  _ Shocked _ that a keeper had returned after cutting them loose.

(There was a memory there, something about the terror of being set free after becoming acclimated to the cage, content with never moving.)

"Move along, pretty boy," said the thug--less pleasing to the eye than the stripe-clad Apaches who had stalked Paris when Armand found Louis. "It's not your fight."

"You don't know that," Armand replied as he glided up to Oscar, stroking that bruised face and bloodied lips. "Is it?" He asked the only living thing that mattered.

Their proud jaw jutted out, on the verge of trying to assert their crumbling independence. Armand had lost his Biblical moorings--he'd be denied only once.

Their resolve crumbled. "Yes," they murmured, barely audible through the forming bruises. 

He smiled, and kissed their forehead, setting their hair to rights. "Hold still," he told them, and they were perfect in their shamed obedience. 

He took their first opponent in a blur of movement, snapping his neck and leaving the blood to lie fallow. The second he drank down, the man's toned musculature amounting to nothing as he choked and flailed. The third he toyed with as he had his pet, letting him run in wide-eyed terror before appearing, chasing him around that small square of light until it seemed he might go mad, jumping into the water to be free of it. 

Through it all Oscar hadn't moved. Armand returned to them, kneeling in the street and pulling them into his arms with all the disappointment of a proud parent. 

"Where is your keeper?" he asked. 

"I told him to leave." 

"And when he didn't?" The money Armand had given was generous enough to prevent such an outcome. 

"I broke his leg. Then I threatened to shoot him." Very, very hesitantly, the wrapped their arms around him. 

"You disobeyed me," he said, knowing the shudder it would bring. "How shall I punish you? You may choose." 

"Don't leave me."

"Such a torment." Armand patted his beloved's uneven hair. "Are you sure you want that misery?"

"Yes." For once, out of all time, there was no hesitation. "Yes, I need you."

It was true, though impersonal. They needed not Armand, but  _ someone _ to do what Armand did for them, and Armand was familiar with that type of hole. He had his own to fill, after all. If he rebuilt this one well enough they might even fit, each into the other's empty spaces; there was time enough to hope, at least.

And perhaps he didn't simply enjoy Oscar, with thoughts like that.

Anyway. If Oscar would be kept, it fell to Armand to keep them well, and so he kissed their maddening mouth and stood.

"No--" they whimpered as he turned away, bony hand catching at the leg of his trousers, and he pulled carelessly from their grasp.

"Follow." He made his voice ice. "You will be punished at home."

Orpheus would not have faltered, had he preternatural senses to assure him of Eurydice's devoted footsteps. But then, Armand was not leading his precious creature  _ out _ of Hades.

 

*

 

He hadn't bothered with renting a hotel on his return, and it served him well now. Oscar walked without question into the abandoned house, its windows broken and whistling as the wind threaded through. There was evidence of fellow transients scattered about, patched blankets and ashes left behind from small attempts at fires. 

"Do you own this place?" Oscar asked him, with the full certainty that Armand owned the entirety of the world. 

"No. It's only a house." Someone owned it, no doubt. A man's children's children who'd forgotten it, or a careless state. 

"Then why are we here?" 

"You're asking questions." He didn't push further, waiting to see what came of it. 

That brief allowance brought them forth in a torrent. It was safe, it seemed, so long as Armand didn't capture them in his eyes. "Where have you been? Why didn't you tell me? What do you think you--"

"I told you I was leaving." He turned on them, wearing the coven master in his bearing. He seized their throat, and even now there was a spasm of fight before adoration took over. "Have you forgotten what I am? That I could kill you here and now?"

"No," they managed through the chokehold, expression shining and reverent despite their bruises. A fallen, mortal angel; their wings would be blackened soon enough. (The haircut was unfortunate, falling forward and covering one of those wonderful mad eyes, but Armand would leave it be, for it was a choice Oscar had made.)

"You saw me kill just tonight," he said seriously. "For you. Do you know the kind of devotion and sickness that requires?"

"Yes," they said, low and urgent, posture an odd mix of seduction and rigidity. "Once when I was a woman--no, twice--they had to die, for him. It was the only way..." Their eye glazed over, and their mind filled with flame. Armand guided them down to their hands and knees, and stepped to one side to admire the submission.

His voice remained hard when he asked, "And would he have done the same for you, Oscar? Would he have given one single human life for yours?"

Oscar shuddered as though struck.

"Did you deserve what I gave you tonight?"

They spoke, too low to be heard by mortal ears.

"Louder," he prompted. 

"No." They crawled to him, head bowed to his feet. "Please." 

"You think you deserve to ask things of me?" He wasn't angry, only curious, but the effect sold well. Another blow without so much as a touch. 

"No, No, that's not it." Their thoughts were fire of a different kind. 

"You want me to beat you?" He brought his foot up, using it to tilt Oscar's face toward him. 

"No..." Even now, debasing themself like this, they wouldn't say it. 

He hammered on those memories, weaving an illusion of his touch without moving an inch. Perfect torment, impossibly given from all sides--Oscar curled in on themself, eyes rolling back into their head. Armand could see their lips whispering prayers, or Goethe. 

He stopped. 

"This isn't what you deserve." He could trap Oscar in a maze for the rest of their days, a world entirely created by his mind. But that creature would be dull beyond description. Not worth keeping.

"I'm sorry," they blurted so quickly, filled with regret at the misstep that might lose them something they needed. Pragmatic, not moral; understandable. "You--please tell me what I can do to make up for it."

( _ Tell me how to buy your love _ , they meant.  _ Tell me how to earn your time _ .)

"I can hear your thoughts," Armand said, straddling their dazed form and carefully avoiding the sight of that pattern that would draw him in if he let it. "You realize that, don't you?"

Their breath came faster as his weight settled upon them, purest shame and disgust hammering their skull.

Shame, disgust, and one thing more--that constant, horrified hum of  _ desire _ .

"I can feel them, Oscar." They shuddered at his touch to their sides, their neck, the nipples covered by theirshabby shirt. He bit his own tongue before bestowing a choiceless kiss, and relished the intensifying shudder the blood provoked. "I can feel every filthy thing you want. So what does my love deserve?"

Their hips bucked against his.

"Answer me." The friction of his body was enough it seemed, even without reciprocation. "Or I'll leave you here." 

"Use me," they whimpered. And then, almost a scream, "Help me!"

"Who are you?" 

"I--I," He'd pinned their hands to keep them from touching. Only their mouth was allowed to move. "I'm yours." 

A cipher. "My own shadow doesn't interest me." 

"I'm--I," Their mind whirred through a dozen images like the cameras Armand saw on the street, a whirlwind that intrigued and yet rebuffed him. They both heard the flapping of wings, and it didn't matter if it was illusion. "Stop it!"

"Answer." The smell of their blood taunted his empty veins, straining his patience. 

"What do you want? What should I say?" 

He reached between their legs and squeezed, not hard at all compared to his strength. They screamed. They whimpered when he stopped. 

"Teach me." There were tears in their eyes. "I don't know. I don't know." 

He considered, for a moment. He'd spent long hours entrenched in the murk of Oscar's mind, playing with the shattered pieces that they were slowly beginning to sort away into the dark, only to break free again at the slightest provocation. And yet, he'd had a strange amount of clarity in watching his pet with other mortals. 

"I can't give you what you need, my sweet," he said, feeling their heat, their need in his hand through cloth and fear and pain. Their freed hands rose, moved as though possessed, to touch Armand's body, trying to raise a ghost long departed.

"Please," they begged, so prettily. "You have to, or--If I could have--" Jumbled and murky, confusing the self's needs with those of another. "Do it to me, sir."

They didn't flinch at the slap to their face, loud in the empty house. Their head rolled on their long neck, curls bouncing.

"When I say that I cannot, I mean it, Doubter. My body doesn't want yours."

They let out a cry of soft despair, like a wounded animal.

"But others will." He spoke directly into their ear, their mind. "Living people. People that I can send to you, to teach you of life."

Their suspender strap slid down easily, their buttons strewn like pebbles, and they still burned at Armand's cold touch.

"You may find yourself there, despite your shame, for from now on I shall own that. It belongs to me, and only I see it, my love."

"I belong to you," they parroted wrongly, but correctly, and he rewarded the enthusiasm with a small, cutting nip.

With the suspenders down, their trousers slid low on their narrow and underfed hips, showing the top edge of a garter belt. They still had enough blood in them to blush cherry-red and hot in their face, the tips of their ears, all down their beautiful chest.

"I will feel your shame, but you will give no sign when doing my bidding. Understood?" He barely brushed a fingertip over the smooth, leaking head inside the lacy undergarments.

"Yes. Yes. Oh, oh, it's--yes, please--"

They screamed like one being shot through with electricity.

"This will be our contract. Do you agree?" His touch retreated entirely, the lack of it a breaking blow. 

"Yes, anything. Anything!" 

He brought their climax over them in a wave, watching with detachment and something like affection as the living body beneath him spasmed and dirtied itself with semen and sweat, mixing with the musk of saliva-laced blood on his tongue. He bestowed his benediction with a kiss, and Oscar's tears made trails in the dust. 

 

*

 

There was no more extravagance from that point. Armand's money lay untouched as they moved from one abandoned shelter to the next. Oscar's body grew painfully thin, eath of them waiting for the other to blink. Armand watched them slip a loaf of bread from a bakery with clumsy hands only to catch the owner’s attention, and ran alongside them until Oscar was sick with hunger and overexertion. He fed them blood, and watched them tear into the bread like it was the finest delicacy. From then on their eyes were constantly aware of food and its possibilities, though they were shy of being caught. 

True to his word, Armand mandated their steps. The first man he found (for it must always be men - Oscar balked from the touch of women as from a brand; initial disinterest decayed into disgust at the memory of laughing shadows) was broad and brutish, his hands rough and his manner unpolished. Marius had sent Armand to professional lovers, brothel workers who were trained, like him, to lie and to touch with exquisite expertise. But that wasn't what Oscar had demanded. 

Armand softened the cruelty of it with his presence. His pet wore such a confused face, in spite of what Armand had told them would come. Their tongue was waspish and dismissive as they were caught, assuming they would be saved. Angry as their clothing, the least patchwork they'd had in weeks, was ruined. Fear and something darker as realization set in when their eyes met Armand's and he reminded them only to hide their shame, the choke of surprise at the feeling of being touched and invaded. Used.

And with their shame buried, burning like a mine fire underground, what remained on the surface was wanton. There was nothing feigned in the way they moved into every touch, the way they arched their back in search of the elusive stimulus they craved.

Oscar's standards were not... sophisticated. The man didn't know what he was doing--would never have committed such an atrocity outside of brutal fantasies, if not for Armand's prodding. But he still did well enough with his hammering and groping to have sweet filthy Oscar sweating in his grasp. So tightly wound were they, so needy and starved for  _ this _ more even than food, that Armand half-fancied their heart would explode in their chest before they even reached completion.

After--after the man pulled away, dazed, distant, and horrified, after he stumbled off to whatever fate would be his--they opened their bony fist to reveal his wallet, stolen in the midst of it.

Armand kissed them thoroughly, feeling their fright and thrill at the alien slickness between their lean thighs. Their blood sang in his mouth, awash in memories and dreams, and he drank away the shame of it.

 

*

 

They had moods, Armand found; sometimes when he offered them choices they would show no resistance or care, floating dreamlike through the experiences he curated for them. Other times they would show a decided preference for one option over another, giving him enough indication to build an amusement to suit them.

(When it was the dresses, they were loud. Vocally, even ridiculously, appreciative, or screaming like one being murdered. When it was the suits, they tended to be either silent or outwardly furious.)

And then sometimes--sometimes they would shut down, retreating back into the folds of that old longcoat they'd worn when he found them. Their mind became flat, and he could find no purchase to determine what they wanted then, besides something they feared.

And as to what  _ Armand _ desired--it was simple. He always wanted everything.

They looked precious in the coat. Even these few years on, it made them look young and cared-for: a lost possession wearing its owner's mark of care. Something that you'd need to be quick with, lest discovery occur.

They were already thieves, stealing from one building to the next as the nights wore on and it trended toward winter. Four years now Oscar had been Armand’s, and yet he was barely any closer to understanding the wound they held so close to their chest. 

"What are you doing?" he asked. 

Their head came up. They looked at him, barely seeing. "None of your business." They knew better than to ignore him, at least. 

He asked them the same question he always did when they were lost, like a guiding star. "What do you want?" 

They didn't answer, pointedly turning their head away. Their fingers twisted around the fabric of the coat, and they seemed to shrink into it. 

"It's getting late," he reminded them. The choice of whether to offer their body was always theirs, but they had fallen into a routine. And now, for no reason they had disclosed (nor could Armand pluck it from the haze of their mind), nothing.

"I won't." Their lip turned down into a snarl. 

"No?" He stood, creeping nearer. "Why not?" 

"I'm tired of it." And when he prodded, "I'm not your whore!"

That was exactly what they were, in practical terms. They never needed to paint their lips and draped themselves only minimally. But they answered to Armand's call, and they gave their shame just as he'd ordered, hoping it might reveal something. "Has something changed?"

"I don't--it's not  _ right _ . I was raised better than this, this  _ filth _ ." They struggled, at times, to use words; they communicated best with their body, intact as their mind wasn't.

"You were not." Armand patted their cheek lightly and pressed against that hidden gash. "You remember your childhood, and it was not better. Not moral."

"I..." Their voice climbed higher, a look of passive horror creeping into their features. "I was--I stopped moving, but it kept on happening. He kept--filling me--Then when my legs worked again I ran." Their hand crept down, inside the coat, to touch those private parts that drove them so violently. "Ran and ran and the waters washed me clean, I should be clean now. Better."

They were not pleasuring themself, precisely. More--surveying. Confirming something clouded.

Armand tore their hand away from that fleshy solidity. "Shame, not cleanliness. It hurts you so, because you fear the very earthly things you need. Because someone taught you shame." His own touch was more decided, and based on skills long practiced though lacking human lust to drive them.

The little blood vessels in Oscar's cheeks expanded, warming his skin. Delicious.

"We're all ashamed." They sought his face, his lips, but he held them at bay.

“And who has given us this shame?” He smirked. "Do you believe in God, my darling?" 

"No." Of course not. From down in the gutters, the heavens were too impossibly far to contemplate. "You told me. You wanted--" 

"I release you." And he did, leaving them whimpering and hard, their erection pressed flush against their stomach. Still he held their hands. "I no longer desire your shame. And you no longer need it." 

"I--"

"Any more than you need this." He plucked at the coat. 

They seemed horrified at the thought, as if he'd thrown them from the top of the world. He'd molded them, but it was the wrong shape. He would need to melt the materials and try again- the body was malleable, but the mind wasn't whole. 

He'd realized some time ago that Oscar could reflect nothing for him, no more than Louis could at the end. Oscar understood this world no better than he. It would be kindest to kill him and move on. And yet. He had nowhere to be, no call to follow. And those eyes that adored him stirred some corresponding feeling in his wicked heart. 

"Listen to me." He needn't have said it, but the act of a call to an order wove a spell all its own. "Tonight you will choose who you wish. I will make sure they're yours. You'll come to them as you are now. And you will leave your shame behind." He pulled them into his arms, stroking the ridges of their spine. "You know I'll know, if you disobey. So choose your wildest desire, my love."

His mortal lover made a sound like death, their eyes rolling back momentarily, and they let fall their head upon his shoulder. Almost, he thought they would ask for him again, as they had those first nights--just him and what he could give. (And then they would be his responsibility no more.)

But they had always said they wanted to live, despite it all. Their spine straightened and they became  _ someone _ with distant, thinking eyes.

"I wanted to be a bride, once," they said. "I wanted to die on my wedding day so the wedding night wouldn't dirty it. But I am not--I wasn't--even then. And I wanted."

They were smaller even than Armand now, thinned by deprivation and the same feedings that nourished the vampire.

"I want him." Not a person, precisely, but an image. And such a familiar one. It was cruel, to think that this little bird had been taken in by a patron and denied his needs.

Marius would not--

Marius was ash.

Armand was the patron.

It took time, finding a man who could be what Oscar needed (a woman, strangely, was also permitted in this--memories showed one just alike to the man, respectable, gently instructing and then inflaming touch by touch until the need bubbled over into disaster). But the man was better, still. Was desired.

A kind, resolute, professional man, not the crude brutes they usually chose, and older than them both put together in purely mortal time. He saw Oscar passing and was at first trying only to help this wandering, broken-winged thing, until Armand's mind tangled with his, and then...

It wasn't wholly his doing. There was lust at the back of the man's mind, tamed by restraint and kindness for his fellows. Armand only struck the match, feeding it until their victim became a beast. It was not the work of a moral man, to twist a will to fit his own agenda. But Armand would never be a man, and his morals were his own. He followed along in silence as Oscar was shepherded down the streets, nudging as he was needed.  (No, it mustn't be in the streets. That would be too quick, too frantic. Not as fully revealing as Oscar needed. It must be in private.)

The man shared his clean, modest flat with no one. Oscar looked out of place sitting at the kitchen table as the man brought them a glass of water. Armand hadn't mandated the little kindness, and it fascinated him all the more for how it made his flower wilt at the edges, the resolve of their identity shaken. He was asking what they needed, what he could do. 

They collapsed into his arms, the act muddied by real despair, and even without Armand’s interference this one would’ve given into the need to touch and kiss. 

"I've been so alone," they were saying, and perhaps that was not an act either. Armand wasn't fool enough to think his company was satisfying, with the line of mortality between them. It was simply all-encompassing. 

They sank to their knees without fanfare, scrabbling at his belt as if they were starving. Taste, always, was their fascination. Their tongue was as quick and merciless as Armand's when they took a mind to it, and now they worked in earnest, trails of saliva left behind as they tried to choke down more than they could swallow.

The man stroked their dirty hair and gripped their shoulders, muttering confused nothings as Oscar slipped their hand up to assist with the process. Long ago, Armand had done the same with more grace, trained to make it look pleasing. But the  _ rawness _ of this had an allure different from art. Each vile sucking draw and shocked gasp ignited the air in the close, stuffy room.

Even with all the times they'd done this since coming into Armand's possession, Oscar gagged on the man's last out-of-control thrust, spilling white from their lovely slash of a mouth.

"Sorry, sorry--" The man pushed Oscar back and wiped their face with soft hands. "I don't know what came over me, are you alright--"

Armand shoved him back under, preserving the kindness but quieting the worry. He led them both to the modest bedroom, a phantom to the victim's senses, and Oscar fell back upon the bed like a dying thing. The man kissed their soiled mouth and touched their member, slick already with need. He kept trying to speak, and Oscar kept their teeth gritted to imprison words they didn't wish to reveal.

"Let me help you." The same words, twisted now in the dark. Oscar was shaking all over, and Armand could feel it through their victim's skin. 

"Help me," they parroted. "Use me." They spread their legs, the torn tights they'd worn constricting their skin and making angry red lines. 

There was nothing in the man's life to ease the process--no oils, no rubbers, no knowledge in his head as to how to prepare this sweet and wanton thing. Armand left the confusion. Let Oscar beg for their needs. 

"What do you want?" he asked, and it was all the more delicious that Armand hadn't put the words there. His hand was moving up and down, slowly, for that much he was familiar with. Oscar had to reach out to stop him, keeping things from ending too soon. 

"I'm empty." They took his confusion for what it was, reached their long digits into their mouth until they were dripping with saliva and residue. They drew up their knees, doing their best to prepare themself from an almost impossible angle. 

The man stood transfixed, and Armand through him, at the sight. The sheer animal lust of the act, presenting as if in heat. How fitting, since Oscar had been little more than a bundle of instincts when he'd found them. Let it come to the fore here, and fade. 

The man fell to his knees in proper worship, reaching out uneducated but eager hands. He took after Oscar's example, his thicker, shorter fingers lighting pained arousal on the poor waif's face.

"Ah!" Oscar grimaced and then schooled their features, turning pain to lust in mind as well as voice. Not for the man, but for themself--because they  _ wanted _ it to feel good.

"Are you alright? God, you're dry, it can't feel good for you, can it?"

Oscar whined and grabbed the man's free hand, licking the palm and directing it to his straining need. "Use it--fill me up--"

"Oh, son, you're too much."

Armand hadn't pushed for that. His little bird had chosen well for this, and the rewards began already, sticky salt spurting out and redirected almost desperately down to their stretched hole.

"Please, yes. More."

The man was stiff again, as he hadn't been so quickly in years. As he'd perhaps never been, remembered lackluster encounters with people less exciting and forbidden rendered vague and gauzy by this dream.

He got between long, muscled thighs (if Oscar had vanity at all, it was not for their eyes or hair or even the mesmerizing patterns inflicted through pain--it was for their lovely strong legs) and thrust in.

They made no sound, what they wanted to say still caged behind their teeth.

"Harder." Their legs wrapped around his hips, trying to drive him deeper when even inexperienced eyes could see it was too much. There would be tearing, blood. And the danger of it seemed the greatest aphrodisiac. 

The man was kissing their neck, pawing at the long coat they still wore until it was bunched beneath them. His teeth left bruises, the jerking shudder of his hips slamming Oscar's thin frame up and back against the bed. 

"Good. Good boy." His fingers went to their mouth, driving deeper until they gagged. 

When their face was hot and strained they stopped him, pulling free long enough to sit him down on the edge of the bed and straddle him, skewering themself on the only agony they could bear now. 

It was almost like a dance, and the man was plainly terrified at their fervor, his moans accompanied by hands that didn't know what to touch, or how hard. It didn't matter. Oscar wasn't seeing him. 

Their arms wrapped around his neck, their head burying itself in his neck as Armand had done to them so many times. They looked ready to tear out his throat. 

"Papa!" They rasped, and their climax overtook them alongside their tears. 

The man looked bewildered, horrified, still hard as Oscar slid down to the carpet, Their eyes didn't leave his as their hands found his cock and directed the sticky white release until it coated their hair and dripped down their cheeks, one more stream of salt.

After, Armand kissed his lover gently and fully, relishing the lack of tension in muscles finally given a dose of what they craved. They hummed softly when he pushed the coat from their shoulders and down to the floor like the trash it was, and tamely enjoyed the venturing of his fingers when he eased down the torn and ruined stockings. The victim tried in garbled words to help, pointing to the door behind which lay his bathroom, and Armand sent Oscar indulgently off to clean themself of their sticky proof.

And then he met the confused eyes of the man they'd had.

"I thank you for your assistance, sir." He kept his voice sincere, his hands soft, while approaching. The man's heart beat at a throb of terror as Armand's veil of mesmerism lifted and he saw and felt what he'd done.

"Who--who are you people? How?"

"They needed you badly, you see. They were bereft." The man wanted, still, feeling the desire that so many mortals did when gazing into Armand's eyes. Like mice before the serpent. "And I will remember you."

"Please." 

Armand heard that word more than any other, from mortals and immortals alike. He'd even tried saying it himself, in a far, decrepit tower before a pitiless audience. It took on many shades from the different lips that spoke it, but the effect was always the same. 

He held his victim close, gentling his fear with a numbing kiss. This one had done his work, and well. Oscar's mind was quiet, nothing like the building cacophony of the last few weeks, and this man had been gentle even before. He deserved a kind death.

Armand gave him love as best he could, rocking him gently as his heart fought and then slowed under the drain of Armand's thirst.  That sad soul gave up all of its regrets and persistent hopes, preserved in Armand's perfect mental gallery. 

He did Oscar his own final kindness, preparing the body himself rather than forcing their hand--a knife to the stomach and throat, nothing taken. A crime of passion. 

"Is it over?" Oscar hadn't dried or covered themself, stood dripping  wet in the dark room with a towel dragged beside them. Well trained, even beyond expectation. Armand took the towel and tousled their hair dry, cleaned the rest of them as he had that first night. Oscar's eyes were unfocused, staring near but through him, and that was alright. These things took time. 

"Yes, my love." He left the man's blood behind on his darling's lips when he kissed them. "Take something to wear. It will be cold." 

Oscar didn't even move toward the coat when they obeyed, leaving it behind as they drew on oversized slacks and a formal shirt from the small dresser. Even with the aid of a belt, the clothes almost fell off of their thin frame.

Their mind was searching, searching, digging through three sets of earliest memories for something to latch onto. Something to guide them.

Their swift fingers took the man's money quickly enough, though, with more interest in preserving their life than they'd shown in all their time with Armand. A start.

He shepherded them out into the night, and would have thought little more of it if not for the articles in Le Monde, the whispers and hints.

_ Such a strange killing, and so many questions. _

_ What sort of monster had been the deceased? _

_ Blood, and fluids, and was there a victim still out there in need of help? _

_ And the evidence found at the scene--ripped stockings and an old coat, and a wallet full of the identification of an Interpol agent, of all things. _

Armand hadn't thought--

Armand had assumed.

Oscar was dear, and fragile, and alone in the world. When he found them, they were as hungry and neglected as any abandoned pet.

Armand had not considered that the owner might be anything  _ but _ dead, the idea of losing interest in such a mutable and needy creature abhorrent.

At the very least, it was an owner's responsibility to kill what they no longer valued enough to keep alive.

He became obsessed with the question of what manner of man would so casually commit such an act, enough that he wanted to shake his beloved and demand answers directly. That was a danger. They had been quiet and gentle for the past few days, accepting touch without comment and following Armand without the manic threat of violence behind their eyes. In fact, there was little hint of anything, barring a fascination with the sight of coins. They hoarded money now whenever they came across it, storing it in pockets of their jacket or the fold of their socks. 

And though they once again sought out sex, they would no longer submit without payment. This suited Armand; it was the first hint of desire for the future he had seen in his charge. It gave him assurance that he could leave them for a few nights to serve his curiosity.

Inspector Koichi Zenigata lived a life almost as piecemeal as theirs, it seemed, eating hand to mouth and never going to the home he supposedly owned. He worked with a dogged frustration that suited the chain he lived on, snapping after ghosts and old grudges and calling it justice. Armand could see how such a man had raised his Oscar, rigid and unyielding and begging to be broken. His lip curled from the dark, contemplating the satisfaction of killing him and bringing his gore-slicked heart to his love on a platter.

But no. Oscar had finally released their claws from that piece of the past; it would not do to force a return to it now. Much as he'd like to show them his actions, any revenge must ultimately be private, and for himself.

Zenigata worked, to the exclusion of nearly all else. Whatever he did in the day, by night he went from crime scene to office to library for research, mind focused always on the puzzle of some pitiful nemesis.

(Oscar's mind held those faces in it, seen through bubbled glass, but they were not the source of his wounds. His desire for them had been distant, a means to the end of pleasing this master who hummed along just the same without him.)

For nights on end Armand watched the Inspector, waiting to sense the slightest hint of memories of his Oscar's face and body. His soul.

Hamlet had been a foolish play, one both Lestat and Louis had enjoyed to equally foolish distraction, but there was pleasure in the idea of appropriate and certain revenge.

Had the man ever once thought of his lost one, Armand would have had him then.

He didn't.

He thought of crime, and food, and the woman and daughter whose photograph lived in the bottom of a desk drawer. He thought of all but the treasure he'd left in the muck.

Armand began to wonder if he remembered that child at all. Perhaps there was some outside hand at work, the same one that had scrambled Oscar's thoughts and bestowed on them a multitude of unwanted lives. But no--the inspector's thoughts were clear and precise, a river not even seeming to notice how it flowed around an empty space. 

And that, in itself, began to irritate Armand. 

For years he had felt the unyielding adoration his pet had for this man, locked beneath the surface but never far from evidence. And in return, there was nothing. To own a life so completely, to be the center of a universe, and then turn to other affairs and other lovers as if that devotion meant nothing- it was unconscionable. The work of the very worst sort of man. Armand began to hate him. 

The surprising power of that emotion drove him from hiding and set the machinations of his mind to work. He lurked in street corners just out of the Inspector's sight, smiling to himself to see the man's hand twitch toward a gun he wasn't carrying. To know he was seen, if not believed. 

Oscar was none the wiser to this game, which drew out long past its singular visit. They were content to love him, after the shock of that pivotal night had passed, and it was of an intensity that nearly satisfied, a heat that he could see melting his beloved's fat and bones beneath their pale skin. 

He wanted his prey to know of this image. This beautiful creature that had been discarded. He stole a high-tech Polaroid camera and used it to document his love at their most debauched: the center of lustful devotion by a host of eager hands, full to bursting, their clothing ripped and their face obscured in the dim light, the tattoos just visible enough to seem a mirage. He left those photos unmarked on the Inspector's desk, his own private reminder.

Surely the man would recognize a body once possessed, if nothing else. And yes, the next night Zenigata was shaken, pained, and there were whispers in his building of illicit doings.  _ How did he get those, why, from where, that’s not his area--sordid--what’s he hiding-- _ The smell of burnt plastic and chemicals clung to his long brown coat, a twin to the garbage Oscar had come wrapped in. He'd destroyed that beautiful image, and though it would live forever in his own changeless memory, still Armand hated that lack of appreciation.

The man went out to drink at a small tavern more often after that, losing himself in the jostle of humanity while his eyes scanned the crowds of red-faced revelers, seeking something.

He vanished, at times, for his work, and then Armand did worry at possibly losing his chance. If Zenigata died in one of those incidents--but no, he was all too well protected by whatever passed for Gods in these times.

And it was good, in a way, to have those times to devote solely to Oscar, in all their shameless need. He watched then and drank from them, and raised a sweat on their body with his own icy hands before throwing them to the wolves they desired.

And he considered the whispers around the Inspector, all the while.

He knew respectability, and illicit doings; how often had his master admonished him in ages past not to reveal their love, the forbidden and perfect kiss he granted now to Oscar? Things changed little over the centuries.

(But of course, Marius had loved Armand. It was different from this cruelty the Inspector practiced.)

Reputations, someone had once said, were like glass.

And if the man cared for nothing else, it was his pride and his name.

So one night when Oscar lay tired, pale and sated and counting his money from the weeks past, Armand slipped into a demure sweater, tight slacks, and heeled black shoes, and ventured out to meet his benefactor. He'd taken special care with his curls, cutting and styling them to maximize the similarity in all but color. He stepped out as the twin to a ghost, and relished the cruelty of it. 

Interpol's offices weren't meant to see common complaints -- Zenigata had moved up in the world, even if the man himself was much the same. But no locked door held Armand now, not since Santino had undone the latch on that last fateful barrier and welcomed the Children's newest member, innocent blood still on his lips. 

He walked past the desk, making sure those present saw but didn't stop him, their whispers already beginning in lustful chords. Only the oldest were stirred with the briefest sense of unease at his silhouette, the cold focus of his eyes. 

Zenigata's door was unguarded, the light inside an easy mark for predators. The man thought himself safe inside his fortress. Armand used not his powers but his stage training to mimic a voice he'd listened to for years. "Sir?" 

He might have fired a gun, the way the Inspector jerked back. His eyes were full of unconcealed fire when he looked up, pitifully open. How could one who lived in the world of depravity and illicit deeds be so open? He bared his very soul with every look. 

"I don't know how you got here, but you're lost. I don't take sob stories." The armor of his coat and hat were hung on a rack by the door.

"I apologize." Armand cast his eyes down, well-behaved as he'd never been even in life, and crept forward, allowing his steps to click with human noisiness. "But I believe I'm in the right place. You are Zenigata, yes? Inspector Koichi Zenigata?"

"Congratulations, you can read," he replied, gesturing roughly to the name plate on the desk and taking a breath from his stinking cigarette.

"Not well." Armand kept moving, tentative little mouse steps. "I was told to come here by a friend. They said you might be able to help me."

Zenigata swallowed, torn, as Armand settled into a chair by the desk.  _ Too close, _ his mind whispered.

Armand reached out, trying to find the memories that must exist, the lust that must be there, but all seemed dead within. And so he licked his rose-painted lips and smiled like Louis, a smile covering all the world's pain.

"I--have you lost something, kid?"

He wasn't sure what to call Armand; how amusing.

"Many things, sir. I never thought I'd beg like this, used to think myself too proud, but..." He looked up and met those dark eyes, face carefully schooled into a mirror of his lover's naked, needy worship.

"You don't have to--" Zenigata reached out and grabbed Armand's hand with its polished nails in one clumsy paw, well-meaning and warmly alive. "Don't be ashamed. There's nothing wrong with asking for help, even if you have pride." He broke their eye contact, lids falling shut in a pained grimace. "More people should ask."

"Why do you say that?" The need to question broke his facade, just for a moment. He'd watched this man for weeks, and this was the first time he'd seen this kind of face. He cursed his inability to access Zenigata's days as he backtracked. "Can you help me?" 

He leaned forward over the desk, his clinging black clothes creating an appealing curve to his form. He was warm with blood, warmer than his poor child. 

Zenigata reacted as if he were burning, jaw tightening but refusing to let go just yet. "What'd this friend of yours say? I'll get you to somebody who can help." 

How noble, or masquerading as such. "They said you were kind." A lie on all counts--even the Inspector didn't seem to believe it. Armand pressed as close as he could with the desk between them, bringing Zenigata's hand to his cheek. "No one cares when creatures such as us are hurt." 

An assumption of understanding clicked in that brain. "I'm not gonna arrest you." Oh, the fool. He really was kind, in a way dangerous to himself and others. "You don't have to keep doing this. I'll get you the number for a place that can get you on your feet, alright?" He started to reach for a pen. 

"But sir!" Armand stopped him short, using the leverage of his hold. "There's nowhere we can go." The smallest, lascivious grin curled his lip. "We like it, you see. After long enough."

"You can't!" Zenigata recoiled; he flinched as from a fire. Armand 'lost his balance' and performed a look of hurt dismay at the withdrawal.

"Why not?" he asked from his position half-on the desk, feet dangling. "It's what we have left, if none will love us. Just to be useful. To serve as we can. It feels good to be praised, at least." He chewed his lip, careful not to wipe away the lipstick chosen so carefully to match's his precious one's living flush.

Zenigata breathed through his nose and shook his head, fragments of  _ some _ thing breaking free with the onslaught of innocent words.

"Get out," he growled. "You're nothing to do with me, if that's how you look at things."

"But my friend--they said--"

"I'm an Inspector," he snapped. "I investigate thefts. I _ don't know your friend." _

"Well of course not now--but they said you had, once. They said you helped them." He 'accidentally' wobbled and flailed, sending an ashtray to the floor with a crash sure to attract attention. The way he caught himself by a hand on Zenigata's shoulder captured the man's interest fully. "Please," he said so softly. "I'm all alone now, and they were strong. They said you might..."

"Might what?" The man nearly spat the question, but there was fear underneath.

"Might... keep me. If I'm good enough."

The frantic beating of the heart beneath his hand was delicious. Lestat would have made a meal of this man, or perhaps loved him--a fellow self-deluded corruptor playing at hero. 

Lestat...

For a minute Armand lost the scene, long enough for Zenigata to shove him to the floor. Armand cursed his foolishness and the fool who'd caused it for good measure. Of all times to get caught up on that--

"Get out of here, or I'll have you arrested." Zenigata towered over him.

"What for?" 

"Solicitation. Breaking and entering. Should I go on?"

Armand sat up, smoothing his hair, his legs still splayed. "I suppose I'm no replacement for them after all."

"You're barking up the wrong tree." 

"I suppose so." He stood with deliberate slowness, enough to look mortal, and walked to the door as if in defeat. "Oscar would be so disappointed."

"What did y--"

Armand took pleasure in closing the door in the man's face and vanishing from the building. He watched from the roof as the inspector rushed out onto the street, pale and shaken. Good. Let him think it was a ghost.

Armand went home to his lover then, held them in his dead arms and soothed a pain they weren't truly able to feel anymore. He assured them that they were good, beautiful, useful, wanted; he kissed their cheek and swore to keep them until they died or tired of him.

("Impossible," they said, straining against his hand braceleting their wrists. "I'll never--oh, sir--")

He fed from them with all the gentleness he had, hungry because of what he hadn't done.

For Zenigata, his planned meal, still lived, whatever memories he had of Oscar locked away where Armand couldn't touch them, if they indeed existed.

Over the next weeks he flitted and stalked, sticking to shadows and allowing only his profile and hair to show. Each glimpse he granted brought sparks of memory, but none what  _ should _ be. None of how he'd made love to his charge. Armand feared his lover had been more dreadfully neglected than he'd dreamed.

And at the last, he resolved to meet the man publicly and do what damage he could to the only thing that yet seemed to matter.

His precious reputation.

On occasion, the oldest tricks were the best ones.

Oscar was beginning to grow suspicious of his doings--no, suspicious was the wrong word. They feared that he had tired of them, and had gone out to seek new diversions. No matter how he held and soothed them, a sliver of that fear remained embedded in their gut. Perhaps it was now inevitably entwined with who they were, their own little ghost to follow after them. Armand set them to a task of securing their latest hovel from threats and thieves, pushing a fictitious sense of importance to the task.

He dressed in a light floral skirt and a long top, white heeled sandals and no makeup. He had to look naive and pure, taken in by someone he'd been told he could trust.

He dabbed his eyes with saline, enough to make his lashes glitter without risking the tell of bloodstained tears, and returned to the precinct. This time he let himself be seen, a trembling wreck barely able to contain himself. The promised tears spilled forth when they asked him what the matter was.

"I need to see Mr. Zenigata," he managed to choke.

"He's out," the rookie lied. "Can I--"

"No," he moaned. "He told me I could always come to him. He said he'd help me." As if without thought, his hand went to his stomach.

The mark's eyes widened, growing bigger still when Armand wavered on his feet and threatened to fall.

"Here, miss," he said, holding Armand closer than necessary and guiding him to a seat. "Wait here. I'll--I'll get you something to drink, and see if maybe he's come back. Just--"

"Please," he said, clinging and hoping his gloves covered the ice of his touch. "Please, my friend is gone, and the Inspector made promises.

He backed away, seemingly reluctant even to turn away from Armand's frail, violated loveliness.

Armand smiled, so bravely, and let him turn the corner.

It seemed only seconds after that when Armand was hustled into a private room, the young officer's face tight and mind awash with worry.

Within, there was the enemy.

"You!" He barked like the sleuthhound he was.

"Me?" Armand smiled, enjoying the bubbling anger and the potential for a shouting fit.

A proper keeper needed control, and this man--no, he'd never been worthy of their mutual pet.

Armand  _ would _ see him suffer, and  _ would _ see what he'd used Oscar for, to so twist them.

"What the hell are you doing back here?" His hands slammed down on the table, unaware of how he was twisting his audience further against him. "I thought I told you to get out." 

"I know." His shoulders drooped, "You said there was no place for me in your life. But I--"

"If you have the balls to show your face, you'd better be ready to explain why you brought  _ him _ into it."

There it was. the little string that Armand could pull and unravel all the rest. He stuck his fingers in and pulled, taking pleasure in how this man used to being at the top of the foodchain felt the work of an unknown assailant.

"I--I don't know what you're talking about." He turned ever so slightly toward the rookie, hovering near the door. 

"Like hell you don't!" Another rattling slam. 

"Inspector!" Armand's ally was at his side, placing a presumptive hand around his shoulders. "You need to calm down." 

"Don't tell me what I need to do, Favreau." He looked barely contained, mad. So much the better. "Get back to your post." 

"I think I'm needed here." He swallowed his fear and stood his ground. "Sir." 

Between them, Armand was savoring the memories Zenigata had tried to protect. He recognized the small, bright-faced child with adoring eyes from Oscar's own memories--the "truth," it seemed, at least as far as that word went. They had always been devoted, it seemed, never far than arm's reach from the man who'd rescued them. They wept when they were told they must go to school and stay there on their own, begging to remain by his side. 

_ "None of that," Zenigata's words echoed. "Real men don't cry. If you're that upset, then hurry up and work hard. When you graduate, you can join the force." _

"Please," Armand said, reaching out a hand and then flinching it back from an imagined threat of violence. "I can't--you can't ask me to survive like this!"

"I'm not asking you anything," Zenigata shouted, "Except--"

"Oscar. I know. Oscar was--" He swallowed. "Please, won't you take responsibility?" The boy holding him smelled good. Soft. Naive.

"You're talking nonsense!"

"You can't throw something out onto the street. Not when it's used to being cared for." Olive skin was paling with Armand's every word, and he enjoyed it. He did. It was--

He liked it.

"Being abandoned is awful, sir. Our needs are--it's not much, truly, but they said you might care, before they--” (he sobbed here, prettily as ever Lestat had.) “They thought I might be young enough."

To be young and beautiful was so often crucial. One could be trained to be useful. He had learned to paint. Oscar had learned their marksmanship. Neither cared much for their appointed tasks--only the position it afforded them. And then, to outgrow that use...

"You swore!" He burst out, mimicking memories he could see but no longer feel. Oscar had kept on loyally, untouched; their attempts to change that had been their undoing. That was how they were different. That explained the break in this bond, and why it was unlike--

Marius was dead. 

"Get him out of here." Zenigata turned his fiercest gaze on his subordinate, whose face was now openly contemptuous. 

"I think that's a good idea." He started to steer Armand, but the performance wasn't over. With a wail he broke loose, running down the halls with slow clumsy strides. Slow enough to ensure he was followed. 

He ran down the streets to one of the city's many bridges, to the railing where he could appear to sway, beyond reason and sense. The impact of the water would still break a bone or two, but it would be negligible. Worth tearing open that last wound, cementing himself as a black mark on the man's reputation. 

He fell. 

They trawled the site for hours before they found the shoe he'd left behind for them, comfortably walking along the river bed as he waited for his body to heal. The smell was excruciating when he came up several miles away, and his hunger cost the poor Samaritan on the bank her life, but vicious triumph trumped the rest of it. The man hadn't had nearly his share of ghosts. Armand was more than happy to provide.

 

*

 

Oscar was perched thoughtless on a windowsill, knees to their chest, when Armand returned home wet with the river. His hair was dark from the damp and white clothes rendered transparent. They stared and touched him with curious fingers, mapping those same touches upon themself.

“She’s dead,” they whispered, kissing Armand’s cheek with their soft wondrous mouth. No painter in the world had ever rendered such a mouth. “Poor bride,” they said, going to their knees and running their hands up beneath Armand’s skirt, arms wrapping about his thighs in a tight embrace.

“Filthy. Filthy, beautiful.” They wept, human against his flesh, and he nearly touched again the meaning of those words to one not separate from all things.

They did the most animal thing of all somewhere in there, frenzied and without demands upon him as only the most devoted slave might achieve.

Not sex. Worship.

He allowed it, before taking and giving; showing them that they were useful, they were used, they were loved; pressing their mind back into a gentle sleep and curling into his trunk for his own. He hadn’t needed to chain them in years.

After that exorcism, they did--stabilize, certain things seeming to connect properly. Cause and effect. Logic.

When their courage was gathered and their thoughts hidden--they couldn't block him out, but they'd taken to avoiding him when they wanted to hide something; rather adorably, as if it made a difference--they came to him and said that they were sick to death of drafty houses, and demanded he put the pair of them up in means they knew he could afford.

"I don't have any money." He turned out his pockets for show. 

"Liar." It was very fortunate for them he mostly found their bravado endearing, but it began to grate nonetheless.

"I stole it. It's gone." That cache was, anyway.

They frowned, working through the remembered threads of a hundred moralities still wrapped around their throat. They were flicking through other lives without even knowing it, unable to decide a path on their own.

At last they set on him, clumsy but determined. "Then I'll earn it."

Oscar had always been a dreadful seducer, too forward in his intent. Any man of means would catch wise to their intentions within minutes, and they'd taken to flinching when touched, unless it was Armand's hands.

Of course, for some, that was the draw.

They were a veritable wraith by then, thin and pale and dreadfully riding the edge of life. In a short skirt and demure blouse, or a quickly-becoming-antiquated suit patched at the seams, they looked younger than their age (which had to be somewhere in the mid-twenties at this point, however fragmented their memory for dates).

Perhaps some of it was the blood, preserving them bit by bit like an embalming fluid. The rest--they were young inside, no one part of them possessing the full sum of their existence.

And for some men, their shaking bravado was beautiful, in how it meant they could be twisted. Hurt. Their desperation made them easy prey, hungering not just for a hot meal or a few bills (too few, drastically undervalued), but for the hot, violent stabbing in their guts and throat.

Perhaps Armand was one of those men, considering how he relished their abasement and devotion. Some nights after they'd been used and paid, he'd slip cold hands up their skirt and just  _ feel _ while they lay in some abandoned building, lost to decency and all the world.

He made them charge more for the removal of the shirt, his one stipulation. Their markings were so precious.

"Sir--sir," they would gasp, even in the clinch, seeing him though their patrons didn't. And he did love their abjection,  _ loved _ it.

Loved them, driven to a ragged edge by nothing and everything and still somehow  _ his _ .

And they had soft spots, and hard spots. He found both when he thought to try taking the money they'd ‘earned,’ which they stayed on the streets rather than spend.

"What are you doing?" His darling had the gall to ask as he inspected the bills. Their one bright eye glinted in the dark.

He didn't answer, as he often didn't, waiting instead to see what came of it. 

"Don't." They grabbed his wrist, trying to snap iron using a pile of sticks. "It's mine." And when he only smiled, they did too. "I can take it back. Out of your coffin in the morning."

He laughed at them and put it back, pleased with their audacity and amused in thinking of the surprise that would greet them if they ever tried it. 

Time seemed frozen in the little rooms they inhabited together, Oscar with their youthful face, Armand a demon cherub, and all the world around them parading by. He loved them filthy and needing him, his great plans lost somewhere in the joy of that spiralled pattern. Their life was his, more than anyone's before. He might have called them any name, given any order. But no longer for nothing, and that was fair.

He would produce coins that he had found along the streets, taken from his victims--shiny and new, battered and barely useable--and Oscar would melt against him, malleable. And away the coins would go, put into little stores hidden like a magpie building their nest.

He did love when his beloved made choices.

In the midst of this frenzy came a young man. He was barely older than Armand had been, radiant with his long blond hair as he lit up the streets of Paris, and for an instant Armand was convinced that Lestat had somehow restored himself. Captivated, he followed.

The boy was laughing, sunny, and his memories held indignities familiar to them all. And he was no Marquis, but an Earl.

And a wastrel.

Armand  _ wished _ he could loathe him on sight.


End file.
